Gina Rinehart’s critical minerals playbook – where Australia’s mining mogul invests

• Gina Rinehart has amassed a +$4bn portfolio of American stocks and ETFs
• Mining investments remain prominent for the iron ore magnate, especially in the critical minerals space
• We search SEC and ASX records to see where Hancock Prospecting is looking for value

Gina Rinehart, chairman of the Hancock Prospecting empire and Australia’s richest person, has spun her fortune from the Hope Downs JV and Roy Hill iron ore mine into a varied business empire stretching multiple continents, with her Aussie capital increasingly making its way across the Pacific to investments in North America.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has recently lifted the lid on her assets in the US market, featuring a number of stocks that may surprise given the natural resources focus of her Aussie punts in mining and agriculture. A 13F disclosure is required quarterly if an asset manager holds a portfolio valued at more than US$100m.

As of June 30, Rinehart held a portfolio in the States amounting to US$2.85bn ($4.3bn), led not by mining and energy investments but a US$704m holding in the Invesco QQQ Trust, an ETF that tracks the Nasdaq 100.

Hancock’s smaller holdings include media and technology investments that align Rinehart closely with her political allies on the American right – US$4.5m in Trump Media and Technology Group (the holding company for the US President’s message board Truth Social), US$26.7m in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp and US$6.6m in Elon Musk’s Tesla.

There are also some pretty logical investments for anyone with a bit of cash lying around – Dell (US$9.5m), Nvidia (US$9m), Etsy (US$3.8m), Paypal (US$8.2m), energy players EQT Corp (US$35.3m) and Expand Energy (US$20m) and over US$1bn across other market tracking ETFs.

Yet what we’re really looking for are Gina’s resources punts, which have paid off in recent times as Hancock’s investment team have, perhaps ironically, built a strategy around EVs and critical minerals.

Hancock’s American shares include small stakes in carmakers Nio, Stellantis, GM, Xpeng, Li Auto and a handful of lithium and EV ETFs.

She also has reasonable stakes in lithium companies Albemarle, Lithium Argentina, Lithium Americas and SQM, the Chilean miner Hancock has formed a JV with over the Andover deposit in WA.

Right place, right time

More heavily publicised is Rinehart’s near 14 million share stake in MP Materials, the owner of the US’ only rare earths mine, Mountain Pass.

The investment proved prescient. A deal from the US Department of Defense to take a 15% stake in MP, including an offer to purchase NdPr oxide at a floor price of US$110/kg, has more than doubled the value of its shares since July 9, taking Hancock’s stake close to US$900m.

Also in line for a revaluation is a holding in Teck Resources, valued at US$310m on June 30. The Vancouver-based copper and zinc giant is on track now for an $85bn merger with Anglo American that would create the world’s fifth biggest copper mine, its shares 22% higher in the past week.

READ: The $85bn Anglo Teck copper deal shows majors believe in a long copper bull run

Other large critical minerals holdings include a stake in Hudbay Minerals, which produced 138,000t of copper from mines in Canada and Peru last year and owns large development projects in Arizona and Nevada which could produce a combined 200,000tpa once built, including the permitted 85,000tpa Copper World.

That could make it a 250,000tpa copper producer, with the company targeting an average 144,000t copper and 253,000oz gold output per annum between 2025 and 2027.

Then there is Canadian and Australian listed NexGen Energy (ASX:NXG), the uranium developer which owns what could become the largest standalone uranium project in the world once developed – Rook I in Saskatchewan.

Those are just the investments lodged with the US SEC.

Look beyond that and you can see Hancock and Rinehart’s conviction in critical minerals extends into the ASX listed investment space as well.

Lithium bull

Lithium prices may be in the doldrums, but stats provided by IRESS show Gina and Hancock continue to play the long game.

Hancock hasn’t kept up the full 19.9% stake it built in Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR), owner of the Kathleen Valley lithium mine, since a $1.3bn splurge that scuppered a planned $6.6bn sale to US lithium producer Albemarle.

Liontown has been hungry for equity to keep the Goldfields mine running after opening as oversupply caused a 90% dive in lithium prices. But Rinehart’s Hancock remains a major player, controlling over 18% of the Tim Goyder-chaired company as of July 31.

Its latest cash call was a $316m raising which included $50m investments from both the Australian Government’s National Reconstruction Fund and Chinese lithium refiner Canmax Technologies, which diluted Hancock to 17.13%.

With cash to burn, Hancock continues to hold also a 10.5% stake in Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI), third in line behind Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) and Japanese trading house Idemitsu.

Delta is a different kind of investment for Rinehart and Co., and one that demonstrates her team’s conviction in the bright future for lithium producers.

The $120 million capped explorer is sitting at a fraction of the 75c high it hit in lithium’s last bull run in 2023, when MinRes and Hancock entered the fold.

But it’s up ~27% so far this year, as investors have grown cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind the battery metal, with punters angling to pick the bottom.

Uncertainty around supply amid a regulatory crackdown in China has highlighted the value of high quality spodumene operations in stable jurisdictions like WA for lithium purchasers.

Delta currently holds two significant lithium resources at Mt Ida near Leonora – 14.6Mt at 1.2% Li2O and 191ppm tantalum pentoxide – and Yinnetharra in the Gascoyne – recently updated to 21.9Mt at 1% Li2O and 39.4Mt at 102ppm Ta2O5.

Mt Ida is particularly well placed for a future rebound in lithium prices. It already has open pit and underground mining approvals in place and sits in close proximity to existing lithium production infrastructure owned by major shareholder MinRes at Mt Marion and Bald Hill.

As of June 30, Delta had a healthy $58.5m in the bank, immediately bolstered by an initial $39m worth of shares in gold explorer Ballard Mining (ASX:BM1) at its 25c IPO price.

Ballard has since hit a price of 44c, with Hancock in tow as a 6.2% shareholder. The company boasts the 1.1Moz Mt Ida gold project including the 930,000oz Baldock deposit, making Ballard one of the most substantial pre-development WA gold resource holders on the ASX.

It has 85,000m of drilling lined up this year, infilling and chasing extensions at Baldock and is seeking to make additional discoveries across a score of targets on granted mining leases in WA’s Goldfields.

A bit off the beaten track and Rinehart continues to hold a 6% stake in Vulcan Energy Resources (ASX:VUL), the developer of a geothermal lithium and renewable energy project in Germany, which briefly touched a market cap of $2bn during a hype-filled 2021 share market run. Her stake in the $875m capped company now comes in at ~$53m.

Vulcan this week received approval to build a lithium hydroxide plant in Frankfurt.

Rare air

But the largest investment in Hancock’s Aussie stock portfolio is, by some way, an 8.2% share (as of July 31) in Lynas (ASX:LYC), the largest rare earths producer outside China.

At Thursday’s price of $14.28, Rinehart’s ~76.8m shares in the Mt Weld mine operator (before a recent capital raising) clocked in at close to $1.1bn.

Her large positions in Lynas and MP have fuelled speculation about a merger of the West’s two key magnet metals suppliers, though talks which reportedly did not include engagement from the WA billionaire fell apart a couple years ago and, at least publicly, have not been revisited.

Other rare earths investments in the Hancock house include close to 3% of Brazilian ionic clay explorer Brazilian Rare Earths (ASX:BRE) and close to 10% of NT developer Arafura Rare Earths (ASX:ARU), which has received ~$1bn in government backing for its Nolans rare earths mine.

Outside the lithium and rare earths spaces, Hancock’s smaller gambits include a stake in Brazilian nickel and iron ore proponent Centaurus Metals (ASX:CTM), junior explorer PVW Resources (ASX:PVW), pot stock Little Green Pharma (ASX:LGP) and Lakes Blue Energy (ASX:LKO).

The latter ran 40% higher on Thursday after reporting strong gas shows in its Wombat-5 Well drilling in Victoria’s Gippsland Basin as part of its daily drilling updates.

Bonus Round: John Hancock

And Rinehart isn’t the only member of the Hancock family known for ASX interests.

Her son John Hancock, who along with one of his sisters has been locked in legal disputes with his mother over access to the family fortune since October 2014, is also a prominent name on ASX share registers.

One of his largest holdings is a 1.7% stake in Vulcan, where John’s a strange bedfellow alongside Gina.

He also has a significant 5.3% holding in copper explorer White Cliff Minerals (ASX:WCN), where John sits on the board as a non-exec director.

WCN has shone this year, up 20% YTD with a host of high-grade drill results from its Rae project in Nunavut, which already hosts a 4.16Mt at 2.96% Cu resource at Danvers.

The first assay from White Cliff’s drilling at Danvers picked up 58m at 3.08% Cu and 13.3g/t Ag from 52m in April, including 18m at 5.21% Cu and 22.33g/t Ag from 69m.

Follow-up drilling has continued to outline thick, high-grade sediment hosted copper, including 105m at 2.25% Cu from 27.43m at Danvers. It’s now been expanded to a strike of 830m, with extensive sulphide mineralisation found in a drill hole over 4km away.

Diamond drilling is currently active at the Hulk and Stark prospects.

Uranium is a focus of John Hancock’s as well, with Aura Energy (ASX:AEE) his second largest proportional stake.

The company is seeking to develop the 1.8Mlbpa Tiris project in Mauritania and also owns the Häggån project in Sweden, which will ramp up in value next year if the Scandinavian country’s parliament votes up a bill to expunge its seven-year ban on extracting the nuclear fuel.

Based on IRESS data, other mining investments with John Hancock’s signature include Resources and Energy Group (ASX:REZ), Sarytogan Graphite (ASX:SGA) and Vulcan spinoff Kuniko (ASX:KNI).

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Delta Lithium, Ballard Mining, White Cliff Minerals and Aura Energy are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.